Spontaneous Glass Breakage Shower Door

Baltimore on a cold day in february evelyn businsky was on her couch when the sliding glass door behind her spontaneously shattered.

Spontaneous glass breakage shower door.

This is problematic since there are no warning signs and an apparently intact shower door may simply break into pieces suddenly. They are typically benign even when occurring in tempered glass. Homeowners who have experienced this have described the sound as deafening. A far less common but often cited cause of spontaneous glass breakage is nickel sulfide nis inclusions in tempered glass.

Any of these can result in creating a concentrated point load on the edge or corner of the glass. Treat the shower doors and enclosure gently. Replace any deformed or broken grommets or plastic washers. The next minute it was fragmented into minute pieces and the noise of the shattering was very loud sometimes described as deafening.

One minute the shower door was completely intact. Despite that material s high levels of strength and capacity to meet safety glazing requirements it is uniquely vulnerable to these types of failures. The incidents of spontaneous glass breakage in chicago las vegas austin texas and toronto occurred exclusively with tempered glass. Ironically the center tension zone engineered into tempered glass through the quenching process is also what makes it so vulnerable to catastrophic breakage.

Don t let kids hang on towel bars. In the case of spontaneous glass breakage there are no cracks in the glass to notice or fallen pieces on the shower floor. Don t slam the door. The number two reason would be through inclusions microscopic imperfections that grow into a larger crack internally to the pressure layers.

I was glad that the curtain was closed because it just burst. The breakage was never a crack that progressed into pieces of glass tinkling to the floor. There can be several causes or reasons for spontaneous breakages in tempered glass like impact load poor glazing glass to glass contact glass to metal contact very hard setting blocks etc. If there are more than one bumper that the shower door hits adjust the door so they are impacted.

Small nickel sulfide stones can form randomly in the production of float glass.